"In this stunning and well-researched book, Kevin Levin catches the new waves of the study of memory, black soldiers, and the darker underside of the Civil War as well as anyone has." -David Blight, author of Race and Reunion

Please indulge me, Kevin, do you know any middle school instructors who would use this material? Apropos of the video itself — Are the kids meant to think it was reprehensible to work for the Freedmen’s Bureau educating former slaves? Are they to believe that southern whites who supported Reconstruction were swindlers and criminals? I took a moment to go to Insight Learning’s website, where they describe their products as ““for middle school administrators, teachers and parents who are dissatisfied with the low achievement impact of existing grade level material.” My questions for you are; 1. In English, does “low achievement impact” mean “poor quality”? and 2. Why do so many educrats imagine that obfuscation indicates erudition? We finance types may be going straight to Hell, but at least we won’t describe it as diathermically optimized.

“Are the kids meant to think it was reprehensible to work for the Freedmen’s Bureau educating former slaves?”

I think the video is actually trying to put forth a Goofus-and-Gallant contrast in which rapacious Spanky is the good carpetbagger and educator Franky is the good carpetbagger. That’s not to say the video isn’t awful, but it does have a tiny degree of nuance.